


K'atinii

by sootnose



Series: Mando Savage & Family [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-16 23:01:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21279173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sootnose/pseuds/sootnose
Summary: Cuyan remembers his clan markings from before the Empire tore his first family apart.





	K'atinii

Cuyan wouldn't speak when Rook brought him to Gi and Savage's home. He started speaking after a month with them, and within two weeks of that, he spoke more Mando'a than Basic.

While Gi and Savage spoke Basic to him (if the common Mando dialect, peppered with the occasional Mando'a word), they still spoke only Mando'a to Feral. With each other they switched between Mando'a and Basic; there were things easier to express in one language over the other. Still, Mando'a was the dominant language, it was what everyone else in the village spoke until switching to Basic for Cuyan’s convenience.

He’d had more than enough opportunities for language acquisition.

Then, he decided he wanted to be called A'den, before settling on Cuyan. There was already an A'den of his age group in the village, after all. “Blue” had only ever been a placeholder until he asserted a preference. He had wanted to change his name before all this but hadn't really known what he had been looking for. He'd gotten the general idea of it when the other street kids had thought he was a boy. He still hadn't known what he'd wanted to be called, at the time.

Gi bought him face paints. “It helps to have a say about your appearance.” Gi understood.

Cuyan dipped a brush into the yellow paint and angled his face to get the best view through the mirror. It was hard to get the lines right—he’d never had to paint them himself—but the shapes were familiar.

He studied himself in the mirror, and across the room, Gi paused and raised a hand to flick down their visor. They surreptitiously shifted closer to Savage and nudged the Zabrak, nodding at Cuyan.

Savage turned to look and his brows raised slightly. He murmured to Gi and washed his hands of flour, and Gi picked up where he left off with the bread dough while Savage sat down at the table with Cuyan.

_“Alii'gai?”_

Cuyan looked up from the mirror and frowned. “Mh. _‘Lek._ Were my dad’s.” He fell silent, staring at himself in the mirror.

Savage placed a comforting hand on Cuyan’s shoulder. Cuyan glanced at it, looked up, meeting Savage’s eyes. For a moment, they watched each other, then Cuyan looped his hand around and grasped Savage’s forearm, his jaw set.

Savage gave him a nod. Savage understood.

Cuyan turned back to the mirror, examining his reflection again.

When he’d been smaller, he’d looked more like his mom. The clan markings had been a response to his questions; Why didn’t he look more like his dad? Sure, he was blue and yellow-eyed like him but had the montrals and lekku and white splotches and stripes of his mom. Even his mom and dad's girlfriend had taken to wearing his dad's clan markings, even though they had covered some of her tattoos, so they could all be a matching set.

Cuyan wiped off the yellow paint. He had lost some of the roundness to his face since then. Now, he looked more like his dad even without them.

**Author's Note:**

> K'atinii = Endure!


End file.
